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You're a hard-working and driven individual. You have excellent communication skills, strong work experience and a successful track record to prove it. Any company would be lucky to have you. Yet, if you can't succinctly and successfully highlight your skills and experience in a little document known as your resume, none of it matters. For even the most talented of writers, putting together a resume can be a challenge, however, in today's highly competitive workplace, a strong resume is critical to opening career doors for you. So, how can you put your resume to work for you? You can start by reading these simple dos and don'ts.

Let's Start With the Positive — the Dos

Do —

Use professional formats and fonts. While Comic Sans might be a fun font, it's not appropriate for a resume. Consider using a professional font, such as Times New Roman or Arial. Keep your font size 10 points or higher.

List your experience in reverse chronological order with most recent jobs first.

Customize your resume to a particular position so the skills required for the position for which you are applying are clearly highlighted.

Highlight skills and accomplishments you've accumulated in your current and former positions.

Be consistent in tone and style. One of the most common questions for people writing resumes is whether they should use complete sentences or fragments. It doesn't matter but consistency does. If you use fragments starting with verbs, carry that throughout the document.

List your education last. This is especially important if you've been in the workforce for a while.

Be relevant. While the job you had scooping ice cream in high school was fun and rewarding, it doesn't need to be listed on your resume if you're an experienced professional. List only relevant positions.

Quantify your accomplishments. It's one thing to say you've helped build sales programs; it's another if you can quantify how your efforts have impacted the company. For example, you might say, "Instituted a cross-sell program that resulted in $100,000 in additional revenue." Similarly, instead of saying you managed a large staff say, “Managed a team of 20 people."

Now for What to Avoid — the Don'ts Don't —

Be wordy. Human resources personnel and hiring managers often have to review hundreds of resumes for a single position. The easiest way to get your resume overlooked is to be verbose. Choose bullets versus paragraph-style resumes to make review easier for hiring managers.

Have a long resume. For the reasons stated above, it's important to keep your resume to a length of one page or two at most.

Be careless. A resume with typos or formatting errors will give the impression you are careless and not detailed oriented — precisely the impression you don't want to give. Be sure to ask someone who is a good editor to review and proofread your resume for you.

Make up stuff. With all the advances in technology, it's easier than ever for hiring personnel to check your qualifications/experience. Always be truthful with your dates of employment, skills and job responsibilities.

Give Your Resume a Checkup Today! If you have a resume already, check to see how it stands up against these tips and make changes where necessary. If you’re just getting started on your resume, keep in mind these tips as you write.

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